


The World-Wide Weakness

by shabnam_e_maghz



Category: Guys and Dolls - Loesser/Swerling/Burrows, Inception (2010)
Genre: Crack, Crossover, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-08
Updated: 2010-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-12 12:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shabnam_e_maghz/pseuds/shabnam_e_maghz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inception as a "Guys and Dolls" AU/crossover.</p><p>... I got nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World-Wide Weakness

Arthur almost wishes Cobb never found out about performative dreaming. Sure, the risks are low, the damage to your pride about the same as thievery, and the pay obscenely good. Cobb paid his way back to his family back in 2008 once he convinced Arthur to go into the business with him, and who could blame him.

But sometimes Arthur's most fervent wish is that he just hadn't ever had the option.

"All right, couples," says Arthur. "Are you all ready? Three – two – "

The dream's design – a farmhouse with ladies in costumes that are related to farm animals if you squint and think very hard about it – is tacky beyond imagination, and Arthur thanks his lucky stars yet again that his area of expertise isn't architecture. He doesn't think he could design this sort of – of – _carnival_ no matter how much it paid. He tries very hard not to think about the overalls and straw hat he's wearing. Or the bull on whose back he's standing, steering with his feet.

"Ready, chickies?" he gets to say instead, as a penful of ladies in fishnets and peacock spreads of bright yellow feathers rush out and cluster round the bull. "Let us demonstrate to these honeymooners what we've got!"

"I love you a bushel and a peck," Stella the Stone warbles out, winking at one of the gentlemen sitting on the hay-barrel-style chairs.

Arthur sings out with the rest of them, face twisted into an exaggerated pout as he points demonstrably to the bull he is fighting to restrain.

"And I'm talking in my sleep _about you_!" Most of the chickies fall into each other's arms at this point, except for Stella the Stone, who, with a squeaklike yodel, leaps up to a spontaneously-appearing trapeze line to fly through the air, land on the bull's back, and throw her arms around Arthur's neck.

Ringling Bros has nothing on what a bunch of ex-secret agents could get up to given tap shoes, a large budget, and some open dreamspace.

It is halfway through the act – around the time the giant chickens walk in, and the girls start tap-dancing on the farm roof – that Arthur spots Eames.

Stella must have seen him too, because she turns to him and whispers, "Go ahead, Arthur."

"I cannot hazard a guess as to what you may mean," says Arthur, with dignity, as he clambers off the bull and Stella takes his place with barely a hitch.

"What are you doing here," he hisses to Eames.

"Why, this is a honeymoon's dinner show, isn't it?" says Eames. "It is my opinion that a fiancé ought to visit his fiancé. It is one of the principles of the establishment."

"There is so much to say to that," Arthur bites out, and manages to scuttle back into the lineup in time to squek, "Make my life a mess, yes, a mess of happiness!"

Eames grins and waggles his fingers at Arthur. Arthur fancies that it is with an infusion of defiance and dignity that he directs to Eames the following:

"Doodle, oodle, oodle, doodle oodle oodle, doodle oodle oodle, do!"

He hardly notices the brief spasm in the sky, but several honeymooners look up at it curiously, and Eames from across the room mouths: "Gesundheit."

*

"Eames Bristol, you are going to break young Arthur's heart," Stella informs Eames after the show is over and the honeymooners have all exploded into confetti and woken up. "I leave it to you to convince him otherwise in the next few minutes, preferably with a wedding date and not more promises and craps games." She blows her brains out with the confetti gun, giving Arthur a thumbs-up as she goes.

Well, thinks Arthur, she's not called Stella the Stone for nothing. In point of fact no one is sure how she got that name, but that is primarily because no one has ever been brave enough to ask.

"Arthur, my pet, my dove, my darling," begins Eames, and Arthur already knows where this is going.

"I'm not lending you a red cent, Eames."

"But, Arthur, dearest, this is twelve to seven odds, the payoff would be fantastic! It's just one last dice roll, darling, and then we'll be off planning our honeymoon before you know it!"

"We've had our honeymoon," says Arthur drily. "We're not married yet, the good Lord knows, but our honeymoon has come and gone."

"Why are you so hung up over that marriage thing, anyway?" asks Eames. "We're married in spirit, and what does anything else matter? You're a professional man, and I'm a professional man —"

"After a certain age, any man will want to be settling down, Eames," says Arthur, rubbing his nose after a brief, spasmic sky contraction. "It's expected. It's right. What's worse is a man neither married nor sowing any wild oats. Nothing gets you the fish-eye more than that, Eames. I don't even know what to say to my family anymore. 'Are you sure you're gay,' they say. 'Are you sure he's gay,' they say. 'Maybe when you say bi you're really just trying to be edgy, or maybe he's using you as a cover for those CIA things he's doing.' It's horrible, Eames, and what's more, they're right."

"Oh, darling," says Eames. "I can assure you – I can assure you so very confidently that my pangs of conscience would prevent me from letting even a sucker take a bet on the subject – that I am flaming. Or I probably am, as I have never had cause to test the matter on anyone other than your very fine self. Further I posit that your bisexual assertions are liberal-minded, for I'd bank a thou that you, too, are exclusively flaming, and would be even if you had ever been engaged to anyone but me. And as to their third point, even factoring that chicken dance about the farms and bushels and whatnot, I don't think you have an edgy bone in your body. For that matter, I hazard doubts at times as to whether you have _any_ bones in your body."

"But, Eames," says Arthur, "those aren't the real questions. The real question is whether you're gayer for me or for the craps game. And I really sometimes suspect it's the second."

"I'll close the case on those horrible accusations," says Eames, looking injured. "One last craps game, Arthur. Just one more, and then we'll be set and ready and it's off to Niagara like we always dreamed. Besides, I've already got the flow set and going for it. I'm betting Yusuf he can't get that grad student gal to go on a date with him."

"Yusuf?" says Arthur.

"My old chum, best chum in the business really," says Eames.

"I know who Yusuf is," Arthur says. "And I know who Ariadne is – that realism philosophy-thumper who wants us all to eschew dreamspace forever and runs that dreamshare PTSD rehab clinic? I just can't believe he took that bet."

"Yusuf will take any bet if it's about one of three things: chemistry, compound composition, and his terrifyingly potent sex appeal."

It is at that point in the proceedings that the sky starts to convulse and collapse. "A- _choo_!" Arthur hears through the dream, and "Gesundheit," still from inside it. Shortly they both wake up, to a cushy auditorium now empty of honeymooners, performers, and Stella the Stone.

"It's getting worse, and I blame you," says Arthur.

"Sneezing works as a kick, eh," says Eames brightly. "I should tell Yusuf to invest in allergen compounds."

*

Arthur sits despondently at his dressing room table, flicking a handkerchief absently into the air.

It's not really a dressing room table at all, since one does not need to dress before entering a dream stage. It's actually covered in paperwork, documents and primary sources on farmlands in 1930s America, research for the dreamscapes, seventy-eight percent of which the architects inevitably ignore, and another twelve percent of which they only nod drunkenly to.

There are days when Arthur suspects his entire life would be incomparably improved if only he and Eames could get that fucking wedding underway. His blood pressure, his state of mind, the perpetual cold – his health, for sure, would improve, for starters. And besides, the sneezing is starting to affect his performance at his job.

"I suspect, Arthur, that your entire life would be incomparably improved if only you got regularly laid," Eames said to him eight years ago.

"I get regularly laid," said Arthur. "Thank you very much."

"Well, then, laid even more regularly," said Eames, tilting his head. "Much, much more regularly. Sufficiently regularly that you would go a few hundred pegs more casual every once in a blue Friday."

"I suppose you're in the market for setting up such regularity," said Arthur, with a sigh.

"Not commonly," said Eames. "But for the exemplary cause of getting my new team's point man to untuck his shirt, I think I can make an exception."

When Arthur agreed, he assumed the arrangement would go into effect in a week or so, after a date or something similar. Maybe after a couple days, even, or the next day if things went well, but he didn't really consider the next five seconds to be a timeframe option.

But then Eames grabbed his tie and leaned forward, and when his mouth pressed against Arthur's and his tongue licked Arthur's bottom lip, Arthur wasn't about to complain.

Arthur sneezes.

Sighing, he wipes his nose and flops go of the handkerchief.

It all went downhill from there, was the Lord's truth. Not the sex, of course, but the rest of it. Next thing you know they were getting all attached to each other, and Eames was right about the loosening up, and now Arthur's running a dream cabaret with a troupe of debutantes, a ring around his finger so old it might rust any day, and a whole lot of IOUs from Eames, who is – still – working that craps game.

It's less illegal than extraction, but that's really all Arthur can say for it. It's poker amped to the next level; you gamble on what happens next in the dream, what color a room's wallpaper will be, what will be hiding under a table, whether it'll be warm or humid or breezy outside. You feint the other person's subconscious, and Eames is really good at it, except he never knows when to stop.

Every time Arthur thinks he might finally let it go and have at going straight, his friends will gather round, and Dom Dom Cobb will squint miserably and go on and on about how Eames is the oldest established in the town nowadays, and beg and plead and talk about how things are with two kids and two in-laws and no doll to share it all with, and say how if without Eames' game they'd all be insane, and that'll be that again.

Arthur grabs a pen, scribbles something in his notebook, and starts to do some research on mink.

*

Arthur thinks the last straw is when Eames starts talking about craps games at dinner. That's eight years ago, on their first dinner together. Arthur thinks, I should dump this idiot.

"It has come to my understanding that nothing good can come of this relationship," he says. "I think I really ought to dump you."

"Well, you could," says Eames brightly, "but think about sitting through this incredibly boring meal without even getting any sex to make up for it afterwards."

Thwarted, Arthur thinks.

Then Arthur thinks the last straw is when Eames starts talking about craps games _during_ sex.

"Ten thou you have the best ass in New York," Eames says, voice hitching.

Arthur wants to bet ten thou Eames will not survive until the morning, or at least his engagement ring won't.

Eames tells him not to take the bet. "Odds will be fourteen to eight as soon as I do this," he says. Eames is a natural at predicting odds.

Arthur decides the last of the very last straws is when he wakes up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, and hears Eames talking about dice rolling in his sleep.

Then he changes his mind, and decides the son of the very last of the very last straws is finding a PASIV line taped to Eames' wrist.

"I am never – _ever_ – going to drop everything and meet you in some hotel room for mind-blowing sex _ever again_ just so you can have some way to pass the time before the next craps game," Arthur bellows, and Eames barely stirs.

This is seven years ago.

*

For seven years to follow, Eames is MIA for three weddings and cancels four others; they get on countless trains, and Arthur waits at countless train stations; they get off at too many early stops to count; Arthur's growing old and he's barely thirty.

The main problem with Eames is that Arthur loves him so much. The other main problem with Eames is that he loves Arthur back. Arthur never really doubts this; if he could, if Eames would let him, the engagement would have been broken off years ago and Arthur's face would be a lot smoother and Eames would be drinking himself to death somewhere. Arthur wishes it would feel more conceited of him to feel sure of this, but it doesn't.

What Eames does other than love Arthur is pretty exclusively running the craps game. And, Arthur knows this, but the game isn't the real problem. The real problem is that Arthur can't deal with the games.

Arthur can't deal with the games, and Eames can't let them go, and meanwhile they just keep loving each other. This is a real pickle, and there's no way out of it that Arthur can see. After all, human weakness is universal. There are some parts of each person that simply will not bend; this is the one thing Arthur knows about life for sure. He used to make his living banking on it, and, really, when it comes to springing show concepts, it's something he still relies on. Eames and Arthur can no more change their attitude about the game than Yusuf could ever stop betting on chemicals, compound composition, and his sex appeal, or any more than that Ariadne girl could ever compromise her principles and date a dreamsharer.

Arthur wants to get married, and so does Eames, probably. But he could just as easily ask Eames to quit the gambling on Arthur's schedule as he could as him to stop being funny, or stop wearing mismatched pinstripes.

Well, actually, he has asked about the pinstripes.

*

Arthur knows he's boarded the train and torn up his round-trip return ticket for good when he hears Sally and Ivy talking to each other:

"He's the most darling boy," Sally is saying. "It's such a pity, you know, that —"

"Hello, Arthur," says Ivy loudly, and Arthur knows from their faces who they were talking about.

It should be the last of the son of the last straws.

Instead it's normal.

*

Arthur's still got a few minutes before the mink number gets going, but even if Eames manages to show up in those minutes, Arthur doesn't want to give him the satisfaction. It's a matter of principles, and Eames has long taught Arthur that if a man has nothing else in the world, he ought at least to take solace so long as he can keep to his principles.

So it is on principle that Arthur dips under for a few minutes to practice his backflips off the walls. All is going well until he hears a voice roaring in his ear:

"Don't be like that, snookums! Come on, wake up and let's get one of them old smiles before you head off!"

Arthur is somewhat proud of himself for waking up with a snarl-sneeze instead.

"Look, darling, I'm sorry, but what can you do me, this was not my fault. I ought to get a Congressional medal of honor for managing to sneak away from Saito the Stallion at all!"

"Saito the Stallion?" asks Arthur. "Oh, Eames, you said you were going to let go on all that already. How did he get involved?"

"I keep no secrets from you, Arthur," says Eames, looking injured. "I told you about that one last craps game. I told you about the bet with Yusuf. Who did you think the grand would be going to? By the purest process of deduction, the involvement of Saito the Stallion only follows."

"Saito's not too hard to get rid of if you only pay him up front," says Arthur, accusingly.

"Ah, well, that would be the tricky part, my dear," Eames begins, but Stella the Stone leans her head around the corner at that precise moment, giving Arthur the cue to head out and start regaling the group of dream-drinking new divorcees.

Arthur has maybe over-practiced, because halfway through, while the chickies are doing their thing, he overhears from the divorcees in the audience:

"— can't believe she actually went to Havana with that gambler —"

and the sky convulses in so many sneezes they have to halt the proceedings for a while.

*

"Eames Bristol," says Arthur as soon as they wake up, "do not even try to talk to me right now."

"What?" says Eames.

"Not another word," says Arthur. "Or else we are finito. Conducted. No more. At rest. Case closed. Take back your mink. Ask any of these ladies here. I am told they are in the business of supplying this manner of synonym upon demand."

And, giving one last triumphant sneeze, Arthur gets up and leaves at last.

*

The details of the infamous Havana date seep out through the rumor mill pretty quickly. At least among the dreamscapers' rumor mill — Arthur wonders what the poor suckers who rely on old-school communication and snail-speed gossip do with themselves.

Yusuf had gone knocking on Ariadne's door, and she had turned him down flat, saying it was because he was a dreamscape chemist in a tone of voice that said that was only the beginning of the problem.

But Yusuf had drawn the discussion out, Miles the rehab clinic's president had wound up with an alchemically synthesized gold watch, and he had promised Ariadne a whole clinic full of dreamsharers anonymous if she would go on one date with him.

"In the real world, even," he had said.

She couldn't say no to Havana after that, since, as he put it, physically flying to the real-world Havana was one of the greatest validations of the worth of the tangible world.

The record gets fuzzy after that, because against all odds Yusuf is keeping his mouth shut. Benny's got the down-low from someone who had happened to be at the actual bar, though, and as it turns out, Yusuf had given up and cheated after all: he'd snuck some compound or other into her milkshake, and next thing you know Ariadne was pounding people over the head with broken beer bottles.

"And then some passing nun by the fountain did declare she started belting about if she was a dream she'd be kicking."

"How thorough an investigation did you _do_ on the area around that club?" Arthur asks, but mostly he pokes miserably at his dinner and keeps forgetting he's taken his ring off so he can't fiddle with it anymore instead.

His life right now, to put it quaintly, sucks.

*

"Take him back, son," says Dr. Miles.

"That," says Arthur, "is the very last thing I expected to hear."

"My child," says Dr. Miles, "I have reasons enough in the world to mistrust dreamshare. I don't approve of it; I don't trust it. I've suffered a great deal because of it. I needed so much therapy that by the time I was out of it my therapist suggested I go through the motions of getting a degree, since I already had the knowledge and the conviction in it."

"So our one, admittedly clientless, rehab clinic is run by a hack," says Arthur glumly. "That is fantastic news. We have even fewer resources to deal wth this than I thought."

"You said 'we,'" says Miles brightly.

Arthur glares.

"You can't fight love," says Mils, in tones of supreme conviction. "The first principle of therapy is love."

"It is not," says Arthur, horrified.

"Fine, but bear with me here." Arthur wonders what possessed him to come here in the first place.

"I am going to tell you," says Miles, "exactly what I told Ariadne."

" 'Hit him with a couple dozen lawsuits and get a roofie foghorn for next time?'" Arthur guesses. "That's not really—"

"No," says Miles. "Ariadne is perhaps the dearest person I have to my heart, my star clinic assistant. She is like a daughter to me. And she harbors even stronger reservations than you about —"

"She _does not_ ," says Arthur. "I have _no_ reservations. If I had reservations I wouldn't have been engaged to the man for eight years. If I had reservations I would have broken off the engagement instead of just asking for time to think about it, and by think about it I mean screw up the courage to break it off, possibly by looking into therapy, which I now see was a horrible idea."

"—about whether people can change, and whether people can compromise," Miles continues. Arthur shuts up.

"I don't know whether people can change," says Miles. "I don't know when compromise turns into unnecessary self-sacrifice."

"You _should know_ ," says Arthur. "Jesus, you are the worst therapist in the history of New York City."

"But I do know this," says Miles. "That Ariadne, she of the iron convictions and shining future, dropped everything on a whim and an excuse in order to go overnight to Havana with some dreamshare chemist she'd never met. And that right now, that chemist is down there designing a craps dream about sodium bicarbonate and is going to bet his life savings on it. And that he thinks Ariadne is too strict about imposing her beliefs on him, and Ariadne thinks he's not willing to budge an inch for her every mile."

Miles smiles. "What I know, in short, is that people thinking about compromise is often a lot more time-consuming and difficult than people actually compromising. And as I told her, I shall now tell you: that more I cannot wish you, or anybody, than to wish you'd find your lo—"

"Yeah, love is not the problem in this scenario," says Arthur.

*

If it were, Arthur would be taking a train to Niagara right now with some random joe from the nearest bar, and not leveraging himself down into the sewer line, figuring that if the goal is to hold a craps game and simultaneously hide from Saito the Stallion as a result of Yusuf getting to withhold his grand, this would be the place to accomplish it.

Sure enough, there they are, the whole gang, passed out on lawn chairs or, for those who didn't think to bring anything along, on the sewer floor. Arthur grabs a PASIV line and for a moment, for a moment he is really about to plug in.

Then he sees Yusuf.

Which tells him all he needs to know about whether people can change or compromise. So much for Yusuf's reformatory love affair with Ariadne.

Arthur turns around and stalks back up out of the sewer.

*

"Arthur!" says Eames in surprise.

Arthur can't blame him. He is somewhat surprised himself. He really, really doesn't know what unholy power keeps him bound to Eames like this, but here he is, not on a train yet, and waiting for Eames to come out of the sewer.

"Eames," says Arthur, "This is it. We are eloping and we are doing it now."

"Wh —" Eames begins to say.

"Compromise is a lot harder to talk about than just to _do_ ," says Arthur. "That is the theory at the moment. I propose we prove it to be correct immediately, or else, Eames, I am walking out and I am not coming back, because I can't take anymore."

"Elope," says Eames. "Oh, honeycakes, that sounds like a marvelous idea, it's just that I —"

"It's just that you," repeats Arthur, in tones bordering the homicidal.

"It's just that I — it's just that now's not a good time," says Eames, miserably.

"Why not?"

"Because." Eames looks as if he is about to kill himself. "I have to go to a dreamshare rehab meeting."

Arthur sees red.

"Eames," he declares, "this is the biggest lie you have _ever told me_."

"It's true!" wails Eames miserably. "There was a bet —"

"Got it," says Arthur. "So you mean to tell me that on the off condition that you are not lying, Eames, you meant to tell me that in that case, then the gist of your story is that a bet — a _bet_ — has gotten you to do something that I never even asked you to do, something that I wasn't going to require from you, something that I was willing to work with from you, but this leap that I would never have been presumptuous or unsympathetic enough to demand, this leap, you will _take_ that leap over a _bet_? Is that what you are telling me, Eames?"

Eames seems to weigh the options. "No," he says, with a terrified smile, "Uh. The other one. The lying. I'm lying!"

"Oh, are you," says Arthur, and turns around.

"Wait!" Eames wails, grabbing Arthur's wrist. "God, Arthur, wait a minute, please."

"I've waited _eight years_ ," Arthur says. "I've got to draw the line."

"Look, I didn't know that — we've been _together_ eight years, I didn't realize this marriage thing mattered so much, okay, no, yes I did, I just didn't _realize_ realize, okay, but I just really can't right now, but I _will_ , Arthur, all right —"

Arthur wrenches his arm free.

"Sue me already!" Eames shouts. "Arthur. Come on, Arthur, I love you, all right, just —"

"Love," says Arthur through clenched teeth, "is not the problem here, Eames. It's got nothing to do with love. I just."

"Come on," says Eames. "Please, God, why now — listen, Arthur, shoot me, all right, shoot me, but just please wait until I get this sorted through and I'll —"

"No," says Arthur. "No. Eames, I don't — I could just die of it by now, all right? I can't anymore. I honestly can't."

And that, he knows, Eames knows — that is actually that.

*

Arthur's not precisely surprised to see Ariadne at the train station.

He is surprised to see she's going the opposite way.

"Are you crazy?" he asks.

"Who're you?" asks she.

Introductions are underway when Ariadne's phone beeps. "It's Uncle Miles," she sighs. "He thinks he still needs to convince me to come back."

"Why doesn't he?" asks Arthur, almost offended. "You have no idea what a no-goodnik that Yusuf is, you know."

"Believe me, if he's a no-goodnik, I don't want to know what the rest of us are," she says. "Here," she adds. "Look at this."

She hands him her phone, and it's playing some obviously home-recorded footage. Arthur immediately spots Eames.

"Fischer was taping the group session," she explains, "since it's our largest gathering yet and he was hoping to be able to study how we all did, for next time. Anyway, it's a good thing he bothered, because —"

"Mal!" Arthur says, almost simultaneously with the tinny voice of the recorded Eames.

"Yeah," says Ariadne. "Lt. Mal and Saito the Stallion both."

Sure enough, that was Police Lieutenant Mal and Saito the Stallion, both looking ready for blood, and both looking ready to shut the place down. They said as much, too, when Eames shouted: "This is a legitimate rehab meeting! A totally legit rehab meeting! Tell 'em, Dom!"

"Well," said Miles, "we shall now hear from friend Dom Dom Cobb."

Silence.

" _Dom Dom Cobb_ ," Miles repeated, and Dom, looking miserable, stood up. Then he looked at Mal, which Arthur knew was a mistake, and then his face clammed up, and then, all of a sudden, brightened again.

"Actually," he said, "it came to me, of all things, in a dream!"

Around the time Dom is explaining how he woke up and resolved to never go rocking around the line between dreams and reality ever again, and the entire congregation is joining in and even Saito the Stallion is sitting down and writing on a name tag: "Hi, my name is SAITO, and I am a dreamshare addict," Arthur's train appears on the schedule.

"I'll wait," he says. "There'll be another in an hour or so."

"You won't want to go on that one," says Ariadne. "You want to go back with me. Admit it."

"Of course I do!" Arthur snaps. "But this isn't about that anymore, is it?"

"Listen, what was it about Yusuf that you were going to warn me about?" Ariadne asks.

"That he may have come to some rehab meeting," says Arthur darkly, "but that not an hour before that he was out like a light with a PASIV line in his wrist."

"He was out like a light gambling everything he had to get everyone else to come to the meeting if he guessed the lampshade right," says Ariadne.

The entire world freezes.

"Oh," Arthur manages.

"Yeah," says Ariadne, smiling and fiddling with her ticket.

"No," says Arthur, rallying, "no, no, no, hold it. I have been taught about sucker bets from none other than Yusuf himself when he came to see my show, and I do not buy the whole 'you can't make alterations on a suit you haven't bought' line. That is a dangerous line of thought. It is a horrifying philosophy. I'm fresh out of faith to leap on."

"Well," says Ariadne, "you shouldn't buy a suit at random and hope some hemline work will fix it up for you. But whether the sleeves need tweaking, or whether you need to lose some winter tummy fat before you can wear it – that much you can take on faith. If I can tell you one thing with confidence, it is that in your heart of hearts, you will know without a doubt whether it will fit."

Arthur gets a text from Eames not two seconds later.

He's snapped a photo of two tickets for Niagara.

"Oh, confound it," says Arthur, and he knows he's going back.

*

Stella the Stone ends up running the afterparty, so Arthur resigns himself to having the tackiest wedding in human history.

He doesn't really mind. Not when he's getting married to Eames, after all, and Eames is going to be wearing those mismatched pinstripes for the rest of their lives.

But then Eames mentions that he wants the serivce to be in real space, and Arthur has to give his totem a roll to make sure that's where they actually are.

*

"You wouldn't recognize any of us lot," Eames points out, with delight.

"Except me," says Ariadne, who has a point. Well, possibly if you ignore the henna she's still got on her palms. Yusuf is nearly literally unrecognizable in the clinic uniform, which does — things for him. Saito still has the austere black and white pinstripes, but ever since he started going regularly to the clinic, he's been an awful lot more relaxed. Arthur's not going to test it, but he thinks Saito's backup gun holster might actually be unoccupied nowadays every so often.

Even Lt. Mal and Dom-Dom Cobb are, in their own ways, unrecognizable, ever since they started going out again, as Dom put it, to talk some things over.

"It's how these stories go," says Arthur, turning his face to kiss Eames on the side of the head.

"Amazing, considering how difficult it is to get here, how many of us do."

"Well," says Arthur. "With enough love and tailoring metaphors, people like us can manage a little amazing."


End file.
